Lebanese Youth March as Gov't, Economy Falter // FAI ONLINE

A Lebanese man holds up a sign expressing his distrust in the Lebanese government during street protests in Beiruit (via nationalinterest.org)

The streets of the Lebanese capital of Beirut swelled with young people last weekend as the country’s political and economic woes continued to mount. A generational divide across ethnic and sectarian lines has failed to make any progress toward reconciliation after almost five months of public demonstrations in the small Mediterranean nation.

Protesters marched in a show of “no confidence” in the new government formed last October by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, a Sunni Muslim who has close ties to the Shi’a Hezbollah party. The Hezbollah organization’s main patron is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, who created the militia in the 1980’s. Since then, Hezbollah has risen to prominence in Lebanese politics, courtesy of their Iranian-funded social welfare projects and their self-declared position as leaders of the “resistance” against Israeli “Zionists.”

Although the Lebanese constitution mandates for Sunnis, Shi’a and Christians to share power, Hezbollah has found ways to gradually take hold of the levers of government, especially after the resignation of Saad Hariri last October, at the beginning of the protest movement. Hezbollah and their Syrian and Iranian benefactors were directly responsible for the assassination of Saad’s father, Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, on 14 February, 2005. The assassination sparked the so-called “Cedar Revolution”, which forced the Syrian army out of Lebanon after decades of occupation

Hezbollah initially showed support for the demonstrators. Nasrallah spoke out in favor of change in government leadership, hoping to co-opt the movement as a means to force Hariri from the premiership in favor of a Sunni figure more pliable to his agenda. When Hariri resigned in the face of mounting opposition to his government, Hezbollah (with the support of the IRGC) began to work behind the scenes to elect a new prime minister from friendly Sunni parties. Diab was announced as the favored candidate in January.

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However, Nasrallah and his allies misjudged the driving force behind the grassroots protests, which stretched across ethnic, religious and sectarian divides to join Lebanon’s burgeoning “Youthquake” generation against government corruption, lack of basic services and flagging employment. Protesters had openly called for the dissolution of parliament and new elections, marching for a complete turnover in power from the old guard in favor of a new government that would steer Lebanon in a more liberal and technocratic direction. Almost half of the Lebanese population is under the age of 30, and is not old enough to remember the extreme sectarian divisions of their parents’ generations in the years during the Lebanese Civil War.

After the announcement of Diab’s ascendancy to the premiership, the protest movement swelled even larger in reaction to what was widely seen as a political sleight-of-hand to keep the old guard in power. Chants of “everyone means everyone” rang out across major thoroughfares in Beirut, Tripoli and elsewhere. The parliament’s decision to double-down on their pick and hold a vote of confidence in Diab’s government last week only added fuel to the flames, as protesters held a massive march on Monday from the Lebanese central bank to the Ministry of Interior.

The unrest has also sent Lebanon’s already-fragile economy into an inflationary tailspin, prompting banks to adopt stringent controls, and panicking Lebanon’s national airline, MEA, into announcing that it would only accept American dollars. MEA quickly reversed its decision after a massive public backlash, but the incident underscored the tenuous economic situation in Lebanon that has been growing worse for over a decade, since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War forced the tiny nation to absorb more than 1.5 million refugees, placing immense financial strain on social services and border communities.